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So documented my 911 (Barney) journey on another forum and though it would be good to include it here:

March 2011

Back in 2011, we were living in Vancouver Canada and stumbled across this mid year 911 which had been sitting at our mechanics garage for 4 years (under tyres and car parts). Story went that the mechanics garage neighbour had an agreement that if he stored his 911 at the garage, the mechanic could use the neighbours shop's parking for customer cars. Once the neighbour moved out of that space, car had to vacate the garage and his wife told him to get rid of it. Previous owner had owned it for the past 15 years and when it developed some fuel injection issues, he basically never got around to fixing it so there it sat.

I was able to pick it up for a good deal.

It was in need of a bit of work to get it running but otherwise body was in great shape. Engine had a rebuild many years ago with all the upgrades done to make up for the shortfalls of the notorious 2.7 engine(chain tensioners, head studs etc) but was undocumented.

Initial plans was to restore it to original. Fuchs and exterior was in pretty good condition, interior needed work.

Few pics taken when we went to look @ it!

April 2011

So mechanic where the car sat was not a porsche specialist and didn't want to touch the car anymore so he recommended another shop in North Van called Scan Automotive. I had it towed there and they did a bunch of work to get the car running. In summary, had to have the fuel tank drained, recoated and rust repaired as the car was sitting for so long. Few of the CIS components were replaced and compression tests done. Fuel lines had to also get replaced as the existing ones turned to mush. Car was running but was still a little rough. At the time, i thought it would get better as I drove it more. I remember driving across the bridge and almost rear ending someone as non power brakes operate quite differently to modern cars. Took a while to get used to as well as using my right hand to change gears.

Looked much better in the sun!

Pretty low for stock!

At this point, the tyres on the car were about 20 years old and selection in the 15'' size was lacking. I ended up scouring craigslist and finding a set of genuine powdercoated 16x7 Fuchs for a good price. Guy i bought it off was building a VW bug and changed his mind about mounting these wheels. I was pretty stoked with the wheels and ran them for quite a while.

I was worried that wouldn't fit and to be honest, it did rub if i hit a bump at speed but i didn't care. It looked much better.

May 2011

I had a hefty bill from the mechanics and they still were unable to get it running lean enough to pass emissions. They wanted me to change the fuel distributor which would have cost me an arm and a leg so decided to get a 2nd opinion at another recommended porsche mechanic. He was able to lean the car out by making an adjustment to the WUR and I passed my emissions test.

True what they say that rims really do transform the look of a car.

April 2012

So rest of 2011 was spent just enjoying the car. Had a few electrical issues but other than that car was running ok. Highlight of the year, we decided to test it by driving from Vancouver to Portland. Did the Oregon Coast drive which to date is one of the best drives I've done. Miles and miles of coastal twisties. Heaters on this wasn't great but we were lucky to get warm weather during our trip. Mrs got to drive parts of the twisties. Up to date, if my odometer is correct, I've been getting 300 miles city driving out of a tank which wasn't too bad. It's a 80L tank i think? On this road trip, we got 550 highway miles which we were pleasantly surprised and there was some aggressive driving on the twisties. We ended up in Portland and got to watch a OKC / Trailblazers game which was epic. All up we did about 1500 kms and had no issues

We were planning on moving back to Syd end of this year & will be shipping Barney back so decided to get the car in for paint as labour in Canada is a bit cheaper than Aus. Found a trustworthy panel beater(he actually ended up doing the RWB build in Van) as well so bit the bullet and decided to get some of the rust repaired and get the car repainted all in 1 colour (Sticking with purple). The clear coat on one side of the car was non existant so that had been bugging me for ages.

Some pics of the process

Passenger door had the most amt of rust before we started this process

This is the piece that was cut out from the bottom corner

Lucky smash repair had a good welder and repaired it properly by welding in a new steel piece rather than just use filler

Suspension pan was quite rusted when I got the car.

Battery tray was actually rusted through

Had to buy a brand new suspension pan piece from Restoration Design and get a new battery tray welded in. They have done an awesome job on this!

Spot welds used to repair rust pin holes in the fender

Needed to buy some new headlights so bought czech made bosche genuine H4s.

i also wanted some new buckets as the existing seats were ripped. Oddly enough, I was offered a used passenger side GTS Classic seat from a guy in Brisbane.

I bought it and had it shipped to our place in Sydney. Ordered similar seat from the GTS Classic.

Used seat:

June 2012

Went back to the panel beaters and progress was a little slow and he was running behind schedule.

Also bought a few more goodies:

Suede Momo mod 07 w/ momo hub (Still yet to install)

Focal speakers to replace my 36 year old stockies. These were the only ones that didn't look so bling. Surprising how hard it is to find a pair with just black mesh

Cassette was stuck in my existing blaupunkt so decided to replace it with a 90's CD player with AUX out. Didn't want one of typical sony xplods with crazy equalizer graphics. Seen a few and to me it doesn't look quite right in a 70's porsche

July 2012

Colour came out better than expected. Its hard to get the right shade of purple as you don't want it to be too red. All up, we got 7 coats including clear and paint. Would have loved to do glass out but my budget didn't allow for it. Masking was done really well. Just stoked that my car is all one colour now rather than the matt finish on one side and gloss on the other lol. End to end process was about 4 months all up.

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So car was completed the day before we had to leave Vancouver. Talk about a tight schedule.

Here's a pic on the day I picked it up from the body shop

Luckily after sitting for 3 months, car still ran well enough.

I ordered a set of yokohamas for my stock wheels and reverted the car back to stock for our upcoming road trip around the US. We drove from Vancouver BC, all the way down the PCH to LA. We camped half the way down.. must have been weird for a few ppl seeing a 911 do some very light offroading

Was lucky to go to the pebble beach concourse and parked on the green. Lots of nice cars there.

Sand duning at the oregon/cali border

Had a few fuel injection/over heating issues in North Cali. Was lucky to find a porsche specialist in Santa Rosa and he partly fixed the issue (ignition timing and distributor settings were off). Had to order a new fuel distributor and had it shipped to LA where I got TRE motorsports to fit it for me just prior to shipping it to OZ

Jan 2013

car arrived safely in Sydney. Fortunately i've taken it to the engineer and not too much has to be done outside of new head light lenses , seat belts and speedo.

O and I shipped my black wheels and seats back here so will hopefully fit those back on further down the track

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So fast forward 3 years and it's now 2016. Over the last 3 years, car was really a weekend warrior. Gearbox bushes had to be replaced. Also was kind enough to get a mate help with replacing my half shafts. Upgraded to turbo tie rods and rear shocks. Other than that, from memory didn't have too many issues. Car didn't like traffic too much and overheats if i sit for too long so that was a bit annoying as to the timing of when i could take the car out. Unfortunately my neighbour side swiped the side of my car. I was at a cross roads. Either it simply repaired and resprayed or entertain the thought of backdating and fattening the car. I decided to go with the latter route and embark on a RSR backdate.

There are a lot of different options when it comes to flares but in my mind steel > fibreglass so decided to get a set of turbo flares which will be welded onto the original body. Other back date body panels will be fibreglass. Stan from Performance9 has been a champ to deal with.

Test fit of the front flares

Wheels have also been an extremely tough choice. I was tossing up going JDM wheels (RWB style work wheels etc.) but decided to try and keep it looking a bit more vintage. I ordered a set of custom rims from Lindsay Racing in the states. These are based off original fuchs. They measure 17x 9 in the fronts and 17 x 11 in the rears. Much wider than the stockies.

Went to the shop to strip the interior as that's going to be repainted as well. Will leave it to the pros to take apart the dash as I didn't wanna break it.Tending towards leaving it as mostly naked interior.

One of the rear flares has been welded on

Cutting completed on the other side!

August 2016

Progress was slow and steady but if you want a job well done then just gotta be patient. So during the month of august, all the flares were welded on and part of the car was being brought back to bare metal. Eventually the whole car will be brought back to bare metal.

September 2016

So finally up to date.

Few days ago, I went to check out the car again and some of the fibreglass parts have now been fitted. Cant wait to see all the parts on but I've been dying to see the ducktail mounted on the car and it doesnt disappoint. The last butt shot i took didn't really show the width of the rear flares or how fat the wheels are but here we go:

Next up will be to fit the front and rear bumpers, mould the signal boxes to the front guards and get all the levels and panel gaps correct.

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Thanks guys. Yea was thinking of keeping the colour as its grown on me but it will be changing. Wont reveal as yet as deciding between a few options.

Yea searched for metal repros for the signal box housing but it was looking to be really exxy and blew the budget so went with fiberglass and will get the body guy to epoxy it into the front guards. Will let you guys know if that decision proves to be the right one.

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Thanks guys. Yea was thinking of keeping the colour as its grown on me but it will be changing. Wont reveal as yet as deciding between a few options.

Yea searched for metal repros for the signal box housing but it was looking to be really exxy and blew the budget so went with fiberglass and will get the body guy to epoxy it into the front guards. Will let you guys know if that decision proves to be the right one.

Can you please share your research material?

I have seen the front indicator housings from Dansk, but I wasn't sure if they were complete?

I ended up sourcing my FG set through Stan @ Performance 8 and they were about 1/4 the price.

Looking fantasitc. What are you doing for the front guards? Can you get repro steel extensions? Looks great at any rate

Btw thanks for posting your vids. I had a look at a few of yours and sent them to the bodyshop guy as he wasn't sure how to mount the front and rear bar. I still had the bumper shocks on the car and wasn't sure if they were still required.

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Btw thanks for posting your vids. I had a look at a few of yours and sent them to the bodyshop guy as he wasn't sure how to mount the front and rear bar. I still had the bumper shocks on the car and wasn't sure if they were still required.

I believe there are long hood bumper shocks available, but they are pretty much useless with fibreglass bumpers anyway. You could try to make up some sort of impact bar system under the fibreglass, which I may still do, as there is very little now to stop an impact. I did put in the front strut brace assembly in mine partially to give me some more frontal impact protection if it came to that.

Glad the vids came in useful. I have trolled through hours of youtube vids for info on some of those sorts of things myself.

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I believe there are long hood bumper shocks available, but they are pretty much useless with fibreglass bumpers anyway. You could try to make up some sort of impact bar system under the fibreglass, which I may still do, as there is very little now to stop an impact. I did put in the front strut brace assembly in mine partially to give me some more frontal impact protection if it came to that.

Don't forget that the space saver spare actually contributes to the front end crash zone and was needed to get through some of the crash testing.

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been reading and checking this post with interest... Love your work or your wallet or maybe both!!

I'm an RSR fan and interested in the flare option as I have an RS. I'm confused between 930 turbo flares, RSR flares and ST flares. There is evidently a difference in the shape (?) which I'm not quite across but wondering which are yours. What did Stan get you?

Also, I hear that adding flares is a lot of work so was also wondering if you & your panel guy sussed out buying the full quarter panels to save all that cutting and welding... I have no idea what a whole panel costs but did you do a compare of $$ before going the flare option?

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been reading and checking this post with interest... Love your work or your wallet or maybe both!!

I'm an RSR fan and interested in the flare option as I have an RS. I'm confused between 930 turbo flares, RSR flares and ST flares. There is evidently a difference in the shape (?) which I'm not quite across but wondering which are yours. What did Stan get you?

Also, I hear that adding flares is a lot of work so was also wondering if you & your panel guy sussed out buying the full quarter panels to save all that cutting and welding... I have no idea what a whole panel costs but did you do a compare of $$ before going the flare option?

philby

I can confirm that wether you go full quarter or just the flare, you are cutting and welding either way